Coated medication - Dr. Lee?
 

Dr. Lee, you mentioned in another thread that coated tablets should not be crushed.
I recently added a crushed tablet of Interceptor, a wormer, to the canned food of a stray I feed regularly. The tablets (quite large) are coated and advertised as 'tasty', but I didn't want to take any chances.
Plus my own resident cats turned up their noses so they got the pulverized version as well. Does this mean there will be no effect and i should start again? Any suggestions for the strays who cannot be caught, much less pilled?

Good question, badger. I crushed Drontal wormer to mix with food to give Sweet Pea and was wondering the same thing.

Great questions!

There are coatings for several reasons. Sometimes the coating is for ease of administration and to avoid pills getting stuck in the esophagus. Often these medications will also have chewable, liquid or powder forms. If they do, then you can split or crush the tablets as much as you would like.

If the reason is for protecting the medication from the digestive acids and enzymes of the stomach the it will have the term [B]enteric coated[/B] associated with it. Enteric coated medications should NOT be crushed or even split. Denosyl / SAMe is an enzyme that is readily destroyed in the stomach so even splitting it reduces its efficacy dramatically. There are some of these which can still have some activity such as Azodyl which is not supposed to be opened as a capsule however one study showed that it still had good efficacy. If you need to split them, you need to consult with your veterinarian to see if that is okay or if dose changes should be made or if an alternative is recommended.

I know drontal can be split or crushed and I believe Interceptor can also be split or crushed. :pawprint: